“You can’t turn back yet.” I gestured hopelessly across the ravine. “What about…?”
He shrugged. “What does it matter, Par? So what if we find some scraps left behind by our people, long ago? So what? What does it matter, what does it mean? It can’t feed us, it can’t make the crops grow any better. It’s useless!”
I just stared at him, speechless. I was unable to articulate what it meant to me, what wonder swelled in my chest at the thought of previous generations dwelling in this realm, and constructing great things that we had never even dreamed about; I could not refute his claims, and this angered me.
“But you said that if we could reach the escarpment in less than a day, then we’d continue. And we’d reach it in a matter of hours…”
He smiled at me. “That was before you proved yourself to be a homicidal maniac, Par. I’ve changed my mind. The sensible thing is to turn back now.”
“But I apologised,” I began, impotently.
“I still don’t want to spend any more time with someone who wants me dead.”
“I… I don’t want anything of the kind!” I cried.
He stared at me. “Oh, don’t you?”
And, of course, under the harsh scrutiny of his gaze, I had to look away.
I said, “I’m going. I’m crossing the ravine and investigating the… whatever it might be. And then I’m climbing to the escarpment to see what Old Old Old Marla found there.” I turned and stared at Nohma, and my heartbeat almost deafened me. I took a breath and said, “Nohma, are you coming with me?”
She looked at me, her lips parted as her brain worked. I could not read her expression as conflicting emotions warred behind her huge brown eyes.
To provoke her, one way or the other, I turned and picked my way over the boulders and down into the ravine. I held my breath all the way, not daring to look back. I did not know, then, in my young heart, whether I loved the slight, beautiful girl called Nohma, or hated her.
Long seconds later I heard her call out. “Par! Wait for me. I’m coming!”
Then I did turn and watched as she shrugged on her crab shell and hurried down to meet me, and my heart surged with a combination of victory and love.
Then I saw Kenda move behind her. At first I thought he was preparing himself to leave us, but then I saw — once he had donned his backpack and then his shell — that he too was making his slow way over the boulders to join me. I smiled to myself. I would rather he had retraced his steps and left us, but I knew that his capitulating like this meant that I had won a significant victory.
Nohma joined me, found my hand and squeezed. Under the constant light of the massed stars we made our way across the ravine towards the mysterious, ancient object.
Only as we climbed, and the great dark wedge became outlined against the starry night sky, did we realise how colossal it was. I refrained from turning to Kenda, who dallied in our wake, and asking if he thought it was an illusion now.
We stopped at the very foot of the great V and stared up in awe. The thing was embedded in the side of the hill, and I could see that the V that presented itself to us was but part of a much greater object. I approached the sheer face that sloped away above us, reached out and pressed a hand against the surface. It was pitted, and was covered in some granular but dusty substance. In the starlight it appeared as red as Old Gren the Waterman’s hair.
I stared up at the V as it broadened towards the stars; it was fully fifty men high, or the height of two terraces laid end to end.
“What is it?” Nohma whispered.
I glanced at Kenda. Despite his earlier scepticism, he was staring with big eyes at the object.
I said, “It is something… something made by our people, long ago, Nohma.”
“Yes, but what can it be? Why did they make such a thing?”
I could only shake my head and admit my ignorance.
I turned quickly as a fleet shape disappeared behind a boulder to my right. Kenda took the opportunity to say, “Seeing things again, Par?”
I ignored him and gestured towards the slope. A gully or natural cutting rose beside the left-most flank of the V, climbing towards the escarpment. The way was strewn with scree of all sizes, from small stones to boulders as big as crabs. The going would not be easy, but that would not prevent my ascent.
I led the way.
As we climbed, from time to time I stopped to inspect the great curving flank of the V. I made out a line of small protuberances, perhaps the size of my fist, positioned at regular intervals across the surface. As we approached the mid-point of the V — with the length of a terrace to the lip of the escarpment high above us — I made out an aperture in the object. From this hole emerged a series of thick oval objects, each one curved around the next in a great interlocking chain, like a necklace Nohma had once woven from winterflowers. This chain dropped vertically from the top of the V and disappeared into the earth at our feet.
“What is it?” Nohma said, shaking her head.
“I know,” I said.
Kenda stared at me. “Listen to him!” he said. “How can you possibly–”
“It’s a ladder,” I said. “Just like the Watermen use to reach the lower caverns.”
Kenda snorted. It was a strange ladder, I’ll admit that — but I could see how someone could climb the chain by inserting his feet in the holes between each link. And to prove the point I slipped my right foot into the first link that emerged from the ground, then my left foot in the one above that.
Then, wanting to impress Nohma, I swarmed up the chain until I was fully ten man-lengths above my companions. I stared down at them, and then waved, holding onto the chain with my free hand.
Nohma seemed tiny, far below me. “Please, Par, come down!”
“There’s nothing to fear,” I said. I craned my neck and made out where the chain curved over the edge of the aperture perhaps forty man-lengths above my head. “Watch!”
I climbed the chain, inserting one foot above the other and pulling myself up, halting only once to stare down at Nohma and Kenda. They were much reduced now, like tiny ants as they stared up at me.
I looked up. Another ten man-lengths and I would reach the aperture. I wondered what I would behold then, as I reached the very summit of the V?
Taking deep breaths, as the ascent had exhausted me, I resumed my climb. Five minutes later I approached the horizontal slit in the flank of the V, then made the last push towards the top and slipped through the slit. I lay on my belly and stared down the other side. A short drop below me was a level surface, manufactured from the same material as the flank of the V, though the jagged edge of the platform suggested that it had suffered some great calamity. I stared past the torn margin of material, but made out only darkness beyond.
I jumped down and landed on bended legs, and looked around me. I was on the inside of the construct, surrounded by the shell of the material, which was marked by horizontal and vertical ridges, and more of the fist sized protuberances. I approached the aperture through which the great chain curved, stood on tip-toe and inserted my head. I stared down, called out and waved.
“Nohma!”
They stared up at me, their faces pale in the starlight. They were impossibly tiny, and oddly foreshortened from my perspective.
I called down, “I know what this is! A dwelling where our ancestors lived. A great space like a cavern, but above ground. The rest of the dwelling is buried in the side of the mountain.”
“Be careful!” Nohma called out, her voice made tiny by the distance.
I waved again and moved from the hole. I turned and, cautiously, approached the torn lip of the surface on which I stood, and peered over the edge.